Tuesday, August 04, 2009

The audience in the Gaza Strip clapped and cheered as the actor delivered the movie's most memorable line.

"To kill Israeli soldiers is to worship God."

"Imad Aqel", which had its premiere on Saturday, is the first feature film produced by the Islamist Hamas movement and the title is the name of a Palestinian fighter whom Israel held accountable for the deaths of 13 soldiers and settlers.

In accordance with strict Muslim tradition, men and women sat in separate sections of the theatre to view what Hamas officials termed the "Cinema of Resistance", referring to what it describes as a fight against Israeli occupation.

"Imad Aqel" was filmed on a set built inside the former Jewish settlement of Ganei Tal in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

It depicts Hamas's founding in the 1980s, attacks Aqel mounted on the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the signing of the Oslo peace accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993.

The film cost $120,000 and was written by Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior leader of Hamas, which the West regards as a terrorist group and shuns because of its refusal to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept existing interim peace deals.

Aqel was killed at the age of 22 by Israeli soldiers who surrounded his hideout in Gaza in 1993.

Four of the actors in the film, which took several months to make, were later killed in the 22-day offensive Israel launched in the Gaza Strip last December with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters.

Majed Jendeya, the movie's German-trained director, said he hoped to screen the film at the Cannes festival in France.

The famous Guggenheim Museum in New York has a blog that says it "tells the Guggenheim’s evolving story, and offers insights on vis...

Hasbys!

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